Fic: Bats and Eyeshadow
Title: Bats and Eyeshadow
Series: Vampire Row
Characters: Jasper, Rich
Genre: Paranormal/urban fantasy, humour, gay fiction
Status: Complete
Rating: PG
Content: It's a spoiler, so please highlight to read: Mocking shot at the extreme stereotype of the emo subculture; sarcastic reference to suicide/wrist-slitting. Also, vampires.
Length: 1, 521 words
Summary: After suffering through too many stares his first morning on campus, Jasper didn't hold out high hopes for his new roommate - at least not until he heard him laugh…
AN: Neither story quite stands alone; they're more like snippets from these characters' lives written for character/world development purposes, but because they amused me, and because I think they’ll set up the proper story nicely, and because some of the conversations had me laugh right out loud at work, I'm posting. It might not be obvious - yet - but this is the spider-venom-bite 'verse…
All blame hereafter goes to mee_eep. You had to mention that spider, didn't you?
Jasper sighed and dropped his laptop bag on the suitcase. His new roommate - sprawled out on the left-hand bed with a book, one hand immersed inside a packet of chicken Twisties - stared, just like everyone else Jasper had run into in the last hour: every last soul in Student Services, the graduate student who'd led the tour group, the gossipers standing in the courtyard and foyer, two guys and a vampire sharing one of the other rooms in the suite. Jasper folded his arms, just to test the theory; his eyes dropped, focused on Jasper's studded wrist-cuff. Staring. Jasper had been on campus for not even five hours and already it was a struggle not to snap something sarcastic at anyone who happened to meet his glance. He took an unnecessary breath - it was a habit he couldn't quite shake, trying to calm himself with an extra burst of oxygen - and stared back. Two could play that game, after all.
His roommate was rather worth staring at, in a laid-back jeans-and-T kind of way, a long black ponytail half concealed by a reverse-facing football team cap. A little too fond of the packet of chips on his lap, perhaps, but cuddly-looking - far more appealing than most of the gym junkies Jasper had had the misfortune to run into. He sighed, hoping that the guy wasn't too interested in football, and then offered a hand. "Hi. I'm Jasper. Your roommate." He would have known ahead of time that he'd be sharing with a vampire; someone would have asked him if he minded - it was probably a legal requirement if it wasn't housing policy. (Jasper figured that he'd end up with someone who truly didn't care - or more likely - someone who thought vampirism was tragic and romantic. He'd prayed for the first.) So the stare wasn't a matter of Jasper's pallor or slightly-protruding fangs - just simple appearance. For crying out loud, if anyone could be a vampire, wasn't there an equal chance of a gentle old grandmother being a leech as much as a bulked-up bodybuilder or a model?
He'd seen a couple of goth lolita girls chatting in the foyer, so why the hell did everyone keep staring at him, as if he were something strange - or worse, too expected to exist?
"Hi. Rich." He stood up, taking Jasper's hand. His skin was warm to the touch, alive; it was a difficult thing to let go, but getting all clingy around a stranger probably wasn't the best way to introduce himself. Rich didn't seem in a hurry to tear his hand away (a point in his favour, Jasper admitted), giving Jasper enough time to notice broken fingernails and - he gulped - a collection of grubby band aids and half-healed cuts. "So." He paused for a moment, looking Jasper up and down. "Can I ask…"
They all started in exactly the same way, those who dared to speak up. He'd heard it three times already that day - to the point where he'd started to wonder if everyone in his tour group had checked the 'lacking tact and sensitivity' box on the admissions forms.
"Yes," Jasper said, forcing his best disaffected-and-darkly-tormented pout. How musicians managed it in promo shoots, he didn't know; Jasper had spent too long in front of the mirror trying to pull it off, and still didn't think he had it down pat. "I spent my high school years listening to My Chemical Romance and writing bad poetry, then I slit my wrists, died, and became a vampire so I could mope about being alive some more. Don't stress if you find me bleeding out on the bathroom floor; I'll just drink up the mess the morning after…"
He let his chain belt slap against his leg on purpose as he grabbed the laptop bag and headed for the empty desk. The room was cupboard-sized, but he hadn’t expected anything different. As long as he had a bed, desk, and wardrobe, he'd do okay. Wondering about the origin of those grey-yellow stains on the carpet by the door probably wasn't a good idea, although investing in some cleaning products might be - all in all, no better or worse than many hotel rooms. A few Monet prints on the walls and his grandmother's patchwork quilt on the bed should at least make his side - it seemed the half furthest away from the window, since Rich already had clothes everywhere and CDs and books piled on every flat surface - homey enough.
It was then he heard it - a gasping, wheezing snort. Jasper turned around.
"I was gonna ask," Rich panted, now slumped back against the chest of drawers, shoulders jerking as he laughed, "where you got your eyeshadow from. Oh, and maybe if you were okay with that side of the room. Figured being away from the window'd be better for you."
"Napoleon Perdis," Jasper said - not that he was wearing any. Makeup tended to be hell on undead skin, since he was already prone to cracking and drying as it was. Over the last six months, he'd come to appreciate his grandparents' frustration in finding a good moisturiser - stuff designed for living skin just didn’t work as well. "Me and my mate go in and get the sales girls to give us a makeover."
Rich's snort of laughter sounded somewhat similar to a honking duck. Jasper cringed - and then found himself laughing. That seemed to make Rich laugh - or honk - harder, and then Jasper laughed harder still at Rich's ridiculous laugh - until they were both leaning against the closest sturdy object and struggling to do anything but chortle.
"Man!" Rich's words came out amidst a gasping wheeze, struggling for breath as he stood up straight and flung himself back on the bed. "I bet … their faces…!"
If there was anything more confronting than a male gothed-up vampire strolling in to a make-up booth and asking in his best camp voice about colour palettes to match his skintone, Jasper hadn't discovered it yet. He and Mark had done it once for a muck-up day dare, and kept on doing it all summer - Mark was as straight as they came, but had the campest voice Jasper had ever heard, and the ability to sound as though getting the right brand of mascara was the most important thing in his world. They'd harassed and terrified the innocent salesgirls at both Myers and David Jones perfume counters - they'd even had quite a few hits on YouTube once Lynn started filming on her phone.
"Pretty much," he said, sitting down on the mattress. "And yeah. Away from the window would be great." This time, he attempted a far more natural sort of a grin. "Thanks."
"N'worries," Rich mumbled, mouth full of Twisties. It must be awkward for him, Jasper realised, to take up a shared residence with a vampire - his parents were human enough, but most of Jasper's family were vampires and well accustomed to accommodating them. Jasper had taken night-time picnics, block-out-blinds, hats, bottled blood, and sunglasses for granted all his life, but it must be harder for a regular person to get used to. It'd probably take a good deal of tolerance from both of them … but at least Rich seemed to have a healthy sense of humour. As long as he wasn't as clumsy as his fingers suggested, it might even be workable. "Wanna hand getting your coffin up here?"
Coming from someone else, it might have been a little less than funny, but Rich grinned at him, and Jasper couldn't help another laugh.
Damn. Why does he have to be so cute?
"I don't have a coffin," Jasper replied. "I do have some cobwebs and plastic bats I thought I'd hang from the ceiling, however. Make the place more homey."
"I hope you're not just putting that on 'cause that'd be awesome." Rich tossed the Twisties packet on the floor - Jasper imagined that there'd be a discussion about allowable mess and the use of a rubbish bin at some point in the near future - and slid off the bed. "Everyone'd be freaking out every time they opened the door…"
He sat there for a moment, imagining it - and then grinned. They would stare, but wouldn't that be something for them to actually stare at? "We could buy some," he suggested, glancing around the room again. A wastepaper basket and bin liners as well, and maybe something to get those dodgy-looking grey marks off the wall. He could hang the bats from the corners, and one near the light-fitting, and a few from the curtain rod. It wouldn't look spooky, but it would be good for a laugh - and making everyone who walked past the doorway look twice. Why not? "If you want to."
"There's a two dollar shop not far from here. I'd bet they've got spiders and bats in the toy section. Wanna go after we've got your stuff?"
The starers, Jasper considered, watching Rich nod and break out into another infectious grin, didn't seem quite so much of an annoyance after all. More like an opportunity, in fact…
Title: Family
Series: Vampire Row
Characters: Jasper, Rich
Genre: Paranormal/urban fantasy, humour, gay fiction
Status: Complete
Rating: PG
Content: Vampires, mention of vegetables
Length: 1, 301 words
Summary: Jasper and Rich talk about their respective families.
"Yeah, Dad," Rich said, mobile pressed to his ear with one shoulder, one hand struggling with the door, the other trying to keep a pile of library books in a pile and not scattered all over the floor. By the time Jasper pushed his laptop aside and got up, Rich had thrown the pile on his clothes-strewn bed and grabbed the phone in one hand. "Yeah, everything's cool. I … what?" He paused for a moment, and then sighed, rolling his eyes in Jasper's direction. "Yes, I've been eating vegetables." Jasper settled back down on his own bed, distracted from the vastness of JSTOR by the lie: he hadn't seen Rich insert anything vegetable-shaped into his mouth over the last three weeks. The healthiest thing he'd eaten was a piece of vegemite on toast. "And! Guess what, Jimpa will be so proud of me. My roommate got a bin, and I've been using it. Swear on my theology textbooks."
He used it sometimes, Jasper amended - and only after Jasper had thrown the wastepaper basket at Rich's head following the discovery of a few tissue-wrapped band aids on the floor. Still, he supposed it was an improvement. (He really didn't want to think about living with Rich at home: his parents either didn't care or had inhuman patience.)
"Yeah, yeah, we're all good … yes, I'll wash my sheets once a week … yep. Yep. Catch you later, okay?"
The phone landed on a stack of CD cases; Rich flung himself backwards on the bed, landing on a pile of jeans but missing the books. "My old man's such a worrier," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think they believe I can survive uni all on my own. Your folks like that?"
"Not really," he said, meaning it. The clan was of the opinion that life was better if they all got out, made mistakes, and then came back with brains and the experience to use them every so often. "Dad worries more than Mum, though. He's still not used to the whole vampire attitude to life. Mum needs to look after him more than us, sometimes."
Rich sat up, leaning on his pillows and a stack of theology texts. (Jasper had asked him once why he was minoring in theology, since Rich didn't seem all that spiritual. "I want to start a cult," he'd replied, grinning; Jasper had the feeling that he wasn't being entirely funny.) "Like what?"
"Like … don't stare at Aunt Cecelia's coffin, don't look in the fridge at my grandparents' place if you don't want to see bottled blood, bring your own food, never use the word 'leech' in front of my cousin Kelly…"
"Your Aunt Cecelia has a coffin? For real?" Rich pulled a box of Smarties out from under his pillow and started munching.
"She's my great-great-great something aunt, and yeah. She's a bit of an eccentric traditionalist. The rest of the clan gave up coffins like two hundred years ago, but she just insists that she can't get a good day's sleep in anything but a coffin…"
Rich whistled, his lips and tongue already turning blue. Jasper glanced back at his laptop, decided against finishing off his pre-tutorial reading (he didn't have to give a presentation, he'd just sit at the back of the room and bluff his way though it - and besides, Uncle Johannes had already told him more stories about the First World War than any textbooks and online articles could ever cover) and closed the lid, amused by Rich's fascination. It all seemed so mundane to him - Aunt Cecelia was a creepy old bat, really, no different to anyone else's creepy aged aunt who kept knitting embarrassing woollen jumpers for everyone at Christmas - but most people tended to be horrified or astounded rather than simply interested. Coming from the guy who'd hung plastic bats all over the room, though, Jasper shouldn't have been too surprised. "Shit, that's awesome. Are all your family vampires? Except your dad? How does that even work, if you're all dead?"
"My mum's not. She decided to stay mortal because Dad'd rather die than turn. And…" Jasper shrugged. There were more than enough people who had stayed mortal in his family tree, but they'd all died - and while most of them had had children, they tended to stay away from the vampire side of the family until, generations later, there were whole clusters of distant mortal relatives he had nothing to do with. "These days, it's not that hard. Sperm banks and adoption and surrogate pregnancies. Way back when, most people waited until after they had kids before deciding to turn." He'd always known that he'd follow in his grandparents' footsteps; Jasper hadn't even wanted to wait until he'd gone through all the bother of finding a partner and having children. (His sister could do that for the both of them, anyway. Jasper rather liked the idea of being the doting vampire uncle who told stories, three hundred years later.) He'd had his grandmother turn him on his eighteenth birthday, the earliest he was legally allowed to choose vampirism - and aside from all the staring, and the reactions of all the human people he'd known all his life and couldn't comprehend his choice, Jasper had never regretted it. "Now everyone's more cool about not turning, but really early on, turning was a rite of passage into adulthood. You weren't an adult member of any clan until you were bitten, and drank your first blood."
"Wow." Rich stared at him open-mouthed. "Damn. My family just consists of me, Dad - he's a mortgage broker - and Jimpa, who's a real estate agent. Conversations around the dinner table are so boring…"
He couldn't help a laugh - a giggling choke that left him unable to speak for several moments. Did he really think it was all blood, bats, and Aunt Cecelia raging in a butchered mangle of modern and Middle English about youth these days, bringing back slavery, and what was so wrong with sleeping in a coffin? "Rich, d'you know what a bunch of vampires talk about when they get together? History. Who did what, when. Which writers got it right, who didn't. Debates on tiny insignificant details like … oh, the kind of motor in the first car Stalin drove. What tailor King Richard whatever preferred the most. Why books and movies get it so wrong - or right, sometimes. Tiny, boring details of history."
Rich glanced towards Jasper's bed, staring at the books stacked up beside him. "Um, Jasper…"
"I'm a vampire," he muttered. "History is just … what we do." Okay … he liked the debates, most of the time. He liked listening to the stories that strayed from politics to real life experiences of periods and events Jasper could only ever imagine. He liked the thought of writing an eventual thesis on vampire history, and liked the thought of being one of the tale-tellers, after he'd lived for a few hundred years and had his own experiences to share. He couldn't imagine studying anything else, at least not for his major - which was part of the reason why he'd moved so far away from home. He wanted to study without the clan telling him everything, wanted to research things for himself without Uncle Frederick leaping in and taking over, and his latest assignment becoming a debate topic for Aunts Luisa and Stephanie…
Rich started snickering, spilling Smarties on the floor; Jasper sighed and rolled his eyes. "Shut up," he said - and then grinned, struck by the perfect subject-change. "Vegetables, you said?"
"I do too eat vegetables."
"When?"
"There's vegetables in noodle cups," Rich said, after a moment's thought. Jasper couldn't help a snicker of his own. "Peas and those little carrot and onion pieces. They're vegetables…"
And now, maybe I can get the damn Maybelline tagline out of my head... O.O
And - fuck you LJ, for eating all my formatting. *snarls* I can't seem to make it centre both cuts without screwing up everything else...
Series: Vampire Row
Characters: Jasper, Rich
Genre: Paranormal/urban fantasy, humour, gay fiction
Status: Complete
Rating: PG
Content: It's a spoiler, so please highlight to read: Mocking shot at the extreme stereotype of the emo subculture; sarcastic reference to suicide/wrist-slitting. Also, vampires.
Length: 1, 521 words
Summary: After suffering through too many stares his first morning on campus, Jasper didn't hold out high hopes for his new roommate - at least not until he heard him laugh…
AN: Neither story quite stands alone; they're more like snippets from these characters' lives written for character/world development purposes, but because they amused me, and because I think they’ll set up the proper story nicely, and because some of the conversations had me laugh right out loud at work, I'm posting. It might not be obvious - yet - but this is the spider-venom-bite 'verse…
All blame hereafter goes to mee_eep. You had to mention that spider, didn't you?
Jasper sighed and dropped his laptop bag on the suitcase. His new roommate - sprawled out on the left-hand bed with a book, one hand immersed inside a packet of chicken Twisties - stared, just like everyone else Jasper had run into in the last hour: every last soul in Student Services, the graduate student who'd led the tour group, the gossipers standing in the courtyard and foyer, two guys and a vampire sharing one of the other rooms in the suite. Jasper folded his arms, just to test the theory; his eyes dropped, focused on Jasper's studded wrist-cuff. Staring. Jasper had been on campus for not even five hours and already it was a struggle not to snap something sarcastic at anyone who happened to meet his glance. He took an unnecessary breath - it was a habit he couldn't quite shake, trying to calm himself with an extra burst of oxygen - and stared back. Two could play that game, after all.
His roommate was rather worth staring at, in a laid-back jeans-and-T kind of way, a long black ponytail half concealed by a reverse-facing football team cap. A little too fond of the packet of chips on his lap, perhaps, but cuddly-looking - far more appealing than most of the gym junkies Jasper had had the misfortune to run into. He sighed, hoping that the guy wasn't too interested in football, and then offered a hand. "Hi. I'm Jasper. Your roommate." He would have known ahead of time that he'd be sharing with a vampire; someone would have asked him if he minded - it was probably a legal requirement if it wasn't housing policy. (Jasper figured that he'd end up with someone who truly didn't care - or more likely - someone who thought vampirism was tragic and romantic. He'd prayed for the first.) So the stare wasn't a matter of Jasper's pallor or slightly-protruding fangs - just simple appearance. For crying out loud, if anyone could be a vampire, wasn't there an equal chance of a gentle old grandmother being a leech as much as a bulked-up bodybuilder or a model?
He'd seen a couple of goth lolita girls chatting in the foyer, so why the hell did everyone keep staring at him, as if he were something strange - or worse, too expected to exist?
"Hi. Rich." He stood up, taking Jasper's hand. His skin was warm to the touch, alive; it was a difficult thing to let go, but getting all clingy around a stranger probably wasn't the best way to introduce himself. Rich didn't seem in a hurry to tear his hand away (a point in his favour, Jasper admitted), giving Jasper enough time to notice broken fingernails and - he gulped - a collection of grubby band aids and half-healed cuts. "So." He paused for a moment, looking Jasper up and down. "Can I ask…"
They all started in exactly the same way, those who dared to speak up. He'd heard it three times already that day - to the point where he'd started to wonder if everyone in his tour group had checked the 'lacking tact and sensitivity' box on the admissions forms.
"Yes," Jasper said, forcing his best disaffected-and-darkly-tormented pout. How musicians managed it in promo shoots, he didn't know; Jasper had spent too long in front of the mirror trying to pull it off, and still didn't think he had it down pat. "I spent my high school years listening to My Chemical Romance and writing bad poetry, then I slit my wrists, died, and became a vampire so I could mope about being alive some more. Don't stress if you find me bleeding out on the bathroom floor; I'll just drink up the mess the morning after…"
He let his chain belt slap against his leg on purpose as he grabbed the laptop bag and headed for the empty desk. The room was cupboard-sized, but he hadn’t expected anything different. As long as he had a bed, desk, and wardrobe, he'd do okay. Wondering about the origin of those grey-yellow stains on the carpet by the door probably wasn't a good idea, although investing in some cleaning products might be - all in all, no better or worse than many hotel rooms. A few Monet prints on the walls and his grandmother's patchwork quilt on the bed should at least make his side - it seemed the half furthest away from the window, since Rich already had clothes everywhere and CDs and books piled on every flat surface - homey enough.
It was then he heard it - a gasping, wheezing snort. Jasper turned around.
"I was gonna ask," Rich panted, now slumped back against the chest of drawers, shoulders jerking as he laughed, "where you got your eyeshadow from. Oh, and maybe if you were okay with that side of the room. Figured being away from the window'd be better for you."
"Napoleon Perdis," Jasper said - not that he was wearing any. Makeup tended to be hell on undead skin, since he was already prone to cracking and drying as it was. Over the last six months, he'd come to appreciate his grandparents' frustration in finding a good moisturiser - stuff designed for living skin just didn’t work as well. "Me and my mate go in and get the sales girls to give us a makeover."
Rich's snort of laughter sounded somewhat similar to a honking duck. Jasper cringed - and then found himself laughing. That seemed to make Rich laugh - or honk - harder, and then Jasper laughed harder still at Rich's ridiculous laugh - until they were both leaning against the closest sturdy object and struggling to do anything but chortle.
"Man!" Rich's words came out amidst a gasping wheeze, struggling for breath as he stood up straight and flung himself back on the bed. "I bet … their faces…!"
If there was anything more confronting than a male gothed-up vampire strolling in to a make-up booth and asking in his best camp voice about colour palettes to match his skintone, Jasper hadn't discovered it yet. He and Mark had done it once for a muck-up day dare, and kept on doing it all summer - Mark was as straight as they came, but had the campest voice Jasper had ever heard, and the ability to sound as though getting the right brand of mascara was the most important thing in his world. They'd harassed and terrified the innocent salesgirls at both Myers and David Jones perfume counters - they'd even had quite a few hits on YouTube once Lynn started filming on her phone.
"Pretty much," he said, sitting down on the mattress. "And yeah. Away from the window would be great." This time, he attempted a far more natural sort of a grin. "Thanks."
"N'worries," Rich mumbled, mouth full of Twisties. It must be awkward for him, Jasper realised, to take up a shared residence with a vampire - his parents were human enough, but most of Jasper's family were vampires and well accustomed to accommodating them. Jasper had taken night-time picnics, block-out-blinds, hats, bottled blood, and sunglasses for granted all his life, but it must be harder for a regular person to get used to. It'd probably take a good deal of tolerance from both of them … but at least Rich seemed to have a healthy sense of humour. As long as he wasn't as clumsy as his fingers suggested, it might even be workable. "Wanna hand getting your coffin up here?"
Coming from someone else, it might have been a little less than funny, but Rich grinned at him, and Jasper couldn't help another laugh.
Damn. Why does he have to be so cute?
"I don't have a coffin," Jasper replied. "I do have some cobwebs and plastic bats I thought I'd hang from the ceiling, however. Make the place more homey."
"I hope you're not just putting that on 'cause that'd be awesome." Rich tossed the Twisties packet on the floor - Jasper imagined that there'd be a discussion about allowable mess and the use of a rubbish bin at some point in the near future - and slid off the bed. "Everyone'd be freaking out every time they opened the door…"
He sat there for a moment, imagining it - and then grinned. They would stare, but wouldn't that be something for them to actually stare at? "We could buy some," he suggested, glancing around the room again. A wastepaper basket and bin liners as well, and maybe something to get those dodgy-looking grey marks off the wall. He could hang the bats from the corners, and one near the light-fitting, and a few from the curtain rod. It wouldn't look spooky, but it would be good for a laugh - and making everyone who walked past the doorway look twice. Why not? "If you want to."
"There's a two dollar shop not far from here. I'd bet they've got spiders and bats in the toy section. Wanna go after we've got your stuff?"
The starers, Jasper considered, watching Rich nod and break out into another infectious grin, didn't seem quite so much of an annoyance after all. More like an opportunity, in fact…
Title: Family
Series: Vampire Row
Characters: Jasper, Rich
Genre: Paranormal/urban fantasy, humour, gay fiction
Status: Complete
Rating: PG
Content: Vampires, mention of vegetables
Length: 1, 301 words
Summary: Jasper and Rich talk about their respective families.
"Yeah, Dad," Rich said, mobile pressed to his ear with one shoulder, one hand struggling with the door, the other trying to keep a pile of library books in a pile and not scattered all over the floor. By the time Jasper pushed his laptop aside and got up, Rich had thrown the pile on his clothes-strewn bed and grabbed the phone in one hand. "Yeah, everything's cool. I … what?" He paused for a moment, and then sighed, rolling his eyes in Jasper's direction. "Yes, I've been eating vegetables." Jasper settled back down on his own bed, distracted from the vastness of JSTOR by the lie: he hadn't seen Rich insert anything vegetable-shaped into his mouth over the last three weeks. The healthiest thing he'd eaten was a piece of vegemite on toast. "And! Guess what, Jimpa will be so proud of me. My roommate got a bin, and I've been using it. Swear on my theology textbooks."
He used it sometimes, Jasper amended - and only after Jasper had thrown the wastepaper basket at Rich's head following the discovery of a few tissue-wrapped band aids on the floor. Still, he supposed it was an improvement. (He really didn't want to think about living with Rich at home: his parents either didn't care or had inhuman patience.)
"Yeah, yeah, we're all good … yes, I'll wash my sheets once a week … yep. Yep. Catch you later, okay?"
The phone landed on a stack of CD cases; Rich flung himself backwards on the bed, landing on a pile of jeans but missing the books. "My old man's such a worrier," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think they believe I can survive uni all on my own. Your folks like that?"
"Not really," he said, meaning it. The clan was of the opinion that life was better if they all got out, made mistakes, and then came back with brains and the experience to use them every so often. "Dad worries more than Mum, though. He's still not used to the whole vampire attitude to life. Mum needs to look after him more than us, sometimes."
Rich sat up, leaning on his pillows and a stack of theology texts. (Jasper had asked him once why he was minoring in theology, since Rich didn't seem all that spiritual. "I want to start a cult," he'd replied, grinning; Jasper had the feeling that he wasn't being entirely funny.) "Like what?"
"Like … don't stare at Aunt Cecelia's coffin, don't look in the fridge at my grandparents' place if you don't want to see bottled blood, bring your own food, never use the word 'leech' in front of my cousin Kelly…"
"Your Aunt Cecelia has a coffin? For real?" Rich pulled a box of Smarties out from under his pillow and started munching.
"She's my great-great-great something aunt, and yeah. She's a bit of an eccentric traditionalist. The rest of the clan gave up coffins like two hundred years ago, but she just insists that she can't get a good day's sleep in anything but a coffin…"
Rich whistled, his lips and tongue already turning blue. Jasper glanced back at his laptop, decided against finishing off his pre-tutorial reading (he didn't have to give a presentation, he'd just sit at the back of the room and bluff his way though it - and besides, Uncle Johannes had already told him more stories about the First World War than any textbooks and online articles could ever cover) and closed the lid, amused by Rich's fascination. It all seemed so mundane to him - Aunt Cecelia was a creepy old bat, really, no different to anyone else's creepy aged aunt who kept knitting embarrassing woollen jumpers for everyone at Christmas - but most people tended to be horrified or astounded rather than simply interested. Coming from the guy who'd hung plastic bats all over the room, though, Jasper shouldn't have been too surprised. "Shit, that's awesome. Are all your family vampires? Except your dad? How does that even work, if you're all dead?"
"My mum's not. She decided to stay mortal because Dad'd rather die than turn. And…" Jasper shrugged. There were more than enough people who had stayed mortal in his family tree, but they'd all died - and while most of them had had children, they tended to stay away from the vampire side of the family until, generations later, there were whole clusters of distant mortal relatives he had nothing to do with. "These days, it's not that hard. Sperm banks and adoption and surrogate pregnancies. Way back when, most people waited until after they had kids before deciding to turn." He'd always known that he'd follow in his grandparents' footsteps; Jasper hadn't even wanted to wait until he'd gone through all the bother of finding a partner and having children. (His sister could do that for the both of them, anyway. Jasper rather liked the idea of being the doting vampire uncle who told stories, three hundred years later.) He'd had his grandmother turn him on his eighteenth birthday, the earliest he was legally allowed to choose vampirism - and aside from all the staring, and the reactions of all the human people he'd known all his life and couldn't comprehend his choice, Jasper had never regretted it. "Now everyone's more cool about not turning, but really early on, turning was a rite of passage into adulthood. You weren't an adult member of any clan until you were bitten, and drank your first blood."
"Wow." Rich stared at him open-mouthed. "Damn. My family just consists of me, Dad - he's a mortgage broker - and Jimpa, who's a real estate agent. Conversations around the dinner table are so boring…"
He couldn't help a laugh - a giggling choke that left him unable to speak for several moments. Did he really think it was all blood, bats, and Aunt Cecelia raging in a butchered mangle of modern and Middle English about youth these days, bringing back slavery, and what was so wrong with sleeping in a coffin? "Rich, d'you know what a bunch of vampires talk about when they get together? History. Who did what, when. Which writers got it right, who didn't. Debates on tiny insignificant details like … oh, the kind of motor in the first car Stalin drove. What tailor King Richard whatever preferred the most. Why books and movies get it so wrong - or right, sometimes. Tiny, boring details of history."
Rich glanced towards Jasper's bed, staring at the books stacked up beside him. "Um, Jasper…"
"I'm a vampire," he muttered. "History is just … what we do." Okay … he liked the debates, most of the time. He liked listening to the stories that strayed from politics to real life experiences of periods and events Jasper could only ever imagine. He liked the thought of writing an eventual thesis on vampire history, and liked the thought of being one of the tale-tellers, after he'd lived for a few hundred years and had his own experiences to share. He couldn't imagine studying anything else, at least not for his major - which was part of the reason why he'd moved so far away from home. He wanted to study without the clan telling him everything, wanted to research things for himself without Uncle Frederick leaping in and taking over, and his latest assignment becoming a debate topic for Aunts Luisa and Stephanie…
Rich started snickering, spilling Smarties on the floor; Jasper sighed and rolled his eyes. "Shut up," he said - and then grinned, struck by the perfect subject-change. "Vegetables, you said?"
"I do too eat vegetables."
"When?"
"There's vegetables in noodle cups," Rich said, after a moment's thought. Jasper couldn't help a snicker of his own. "Peas and those little carrot and onion pieces. They're vegetables…"
And now, maybe I can get the damn Maybelline tagline out of my head... O.O
And - fuck you LJ, for eating all my formatting. *snarls* I can't seem to make it centre both cuts without screwing up everything else...